Family Night
by I'maMePanda
Summary: Every Wednesday Inez takes the evening off and the Peacekeepers and friends take over the saloon kitchen, to eat, drink, tell stories, play games and just have a good time. Not everyone can make it every night, but they try. The peacekeepers, really, really, don't like it when trouble happens on Wednesday nights, and by the end neither do the people making the trouble... YP verse


A/N: Hey guys!

I know. Another WIP. But this one is super funny. (and for those of you waiting for the next chapter of B.O.B, I think it should be out tomorrow. For some reason I like really didn't want to write the discipline scene, that happens sometimes, like burn-out on that topic, almost skipped it, but I finished it today, and since it follows along with the shows story line pretty closely I think I can get the rest done. And maybe the next chapter of All The World, it's like four pages long now.)

This'll be a seven parter, one for each boy, and introducing an interesting gang of outlaws I may use again :)

Enjoy!

*.*.*.*.*

Houston stared dumbfoundedly over the fire at Tommy Clover. Tommy was a mean, hard-hearted, sonuvabitch who'd cheat his own men out of their last penny if he thought he could get away with it-if ol' Parker hadn't gotten the blood poisoning three months ago and up and died on 'em he never would have been running the show-but even though Houston had known that for nearly as long as he'd known Tommy, he'd hadn't realized just how plain _dumb_ he was before. As it was Houston had had just about enough already, him and Cloyd both. If this idiot grinning and all but rubbing his hands together in glee was serious, he'd take his cousin and they'd get themselves out of here, go find a job as ranch hands until something better came along. Not like this was anything special even before Tommy took over. Not with Otto always burning the beans, Milton drying his stinking socks over the fire, next to the cook pot, and that little rat Archie pawing through people's things. One thing he'd figured out, something better _did_ always come along. Might not last, but a man didn't go anywhere not taking risks.

Risks were one thing, what Clover was asking was something else.

Houston hadn't signed up to rob Four Corners bank, no sir, he had not, and he sure as hell hadn't signed up to rob it tonight! Everybody in these parts knew, if you were gonna be stupid enough to tangle with the seven lawmen in the first place you did it on any night but Wednesday.

The stories he'd heard...Houston shuddered.

Archie must have agreed because he piped up, "Ya gotta be kiddin', ain't worth goin' there, no one gets into that bank, an' the ones that get close pay for it! Them peacekeepers is savages, they dangle people off roofs, blow people up, and my cousin Lily, she's got a friend who lives there, and she heard tell they sicced a pig on a man once and it bit off his," he gestured in a way that had every man there wincing and pressing their legs together. Houston was pretty sure Archie was full of crap on that last one, because sure he'd heard pigs would eat anything, hell, seen them eat about anything, but he didn't reckon a pig would be smart enough to zero in like that. Still what's the point of chancing it? Archie might be a little weasel, but that meant he was good at weaseling himself away from the real danger. Houston figured Archie was like one of those canaries they sent in with miners, only instead of you running when the canary died, with Archie you ran when he ran.

"Yer just a yellow-bellied polecat ain't ever been good for nothin' anyway," Tommy snorted, even though he'd reacted the same way as everyone else.

"Tell you what I heard," said Cloyd, in that slow, careful way of his that made people think either he was considering things real carefully or he was a few bricks shy of a load. Houston knew it was both, but he'd dare anybody to say the second one. Mostly because it was fun to watch Cloyd wipe the floor with people. "Heard tell they dumped a man head-first down an outhouse hole. Heard it from Virgle Willer, on account of he was the man they did it to."

"That old snake?", snorted Milton, "Probably a lie. Most everything out of his mouth is."

"He weren't lying," said Cloyd, mouth tightening, and Milton, knowing his temper backed down. "Happened last winter..."

*.*.*.*.*

The preacher grinned wickedly as he held the begging man by his ankles. "Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death," he said, lowering him a few inches, the would-be wagon hi-jacker sticking out his arms and placing his hands flat on either side of the hole in the board as Josiah shoved him closer to the muck below, his head now nearly even with the rim, "Unfortunately, you ain't been living a righteous life."

"This ain't right! You can't do this to a man!" As the smell of ammonia and worse rose up around the man's head he gagged once, trying to push up with his arms, but Josiah held him firm.

"It ain't right for a man to have to get up from the best looking dinner he's seen in ages before he gets his first bite, to deal with scum trying to take what don't belong to him." Josiah's evil grin turned over as he remembered that delicious looking roast with just a little pink in the middle and the beautiful, buttery mound of mashed potatoes. The dangling bandit was shouting about blindness and disease and how he'd rather be shot, but he should've thought about that before.

"Please mister, ain't you supposed to be a preacher! Have mercy!"

Mercy? Not only was his dinner going to be cold, this jackass and his friend had tried to steal the wagon of the woman who'd made that dinner. That made Josiah far from merciful. "The lady whose horse and wagon you tried to take is a friend of mine. Would be a hard winter for her with no way to get regularly to town, no way to get help in an emergency. Where was your mercy?" He lowered the criminal another inch, so his arms had no choice but to bend in towards his sides and his long, stringy, hair was only inches from dangling in and mixing with the filth.

"'Siah, we got the other one all locked up, Chris wants to know what you did with yours-whoa, what are you doing!?" JD's voice was a mixture of horror, incredulity, and absolute delight, and Josiah chuckled even as he kept his attention mostly on holding the man above the waste, turning his head just enough that he could see the boy as he spoke.

"Expressing my opinion on theft, since apparently the Lord's ain't good enough for our friend here."

"You're really gonna dump him in the shitter? Really? The shitter?" JD laughed aloud, putting a hand to his hat to keep it there as his shoulders shook.

"Good Lord JD, there is nothing Ah can think of to necessitate you uttering that crude terminology," Ezra stated, from where he'd been standing quite a bit back, hanky over his nose, but gun at the ready in case the man got any funny ideas.

"Your brother is right, JD, language." He ignored JD's complaining mumble that no one said that to Vin, because it was likely true.

"Boys, the rest of us are in here waiting for our supper." Nettie's voice came from the backdoor way of the saloon, the opposite direction of JD, and Josiah turned his head back around the other way, not surprised to see her eyebrow raised and her arms crossed across her chest, "Josiah Sanchez, haven't you locked that nuisance up yet?" Josiah could also see the amused glint in her eye, and the way her lips were curving up the barest amount, too.

"I figured since divine retribution doesn't seem to have arrived yet the Lord wouldn't mind if I helped out." That got a chuckle.

"I'm not saying that thief doesn't deserve it, or that I don't appreciate the gesture, but if you drop him in you're likely to get it on yourself, at least pulling him out. You aren't sitting down at the table like that."

"And I don't want him in my jail if he's gonna smell like-", Nettie's eyes cut over to JD sharply, who stumbled over his words for a moment, recognizing danger, before finishing lamely with, "bad stuff."

"You know, the jail is not actually counted among your possessions, JD," Ezra said, the eye roll clear in his voice for all Josiah couldn't see him, standing at his back.

"It's more my jail than your jail."

"Ah don't-"

"Boys," Josiah said, warning in his voice as he twisted back around the other way again so he could see them, his grip slipping at the same time as the patched and tattered bottom left leg of the outlaw's overalls ripped and the man went head first down into the hole, getting wedged in at the top of his gut. Woops. His legs were kicking but he was silent, Josiah figuring his head was under, and ignoring JD all but rolling on the ground, Ezra complaining that he was going to be sick, and-was that a _cackle_?-, Josiah took a good grip around his legs and heaved. After all, murdering someone by way of outhouse was not something he wanted to have to explain to the Judge. Laying the man on the ground as fast as he could as he grabbled around for purchase on anything, then began attempting to wipe off his face while gagging and coughing, Josiah looked down at his boots and grimaced.

*.*.*.*.*

Everyone around the campfire shuttered, but Archie, not to be outdone, said, "Yeah, that's plenty foul, nasty, but I heard the littlest one is the worst of 'em all. Learned from all his 'brothers', see-that's what they call 'emselves, an' Lily reckons that's why they're so fierce." Tommy muttered something unflattering about cowards in a voice everyone of them could hear, but except for a glare Archie ignored him. "One time he fed some fellas who insulted a girl he's sweet on, so that she didn't wanna go to that get together they have with him, somethin' that made 'em sick as dogs, for days an' days. Another one I heard, was a man was escaping-his boys caused a ruckus somewhere in town and then the guy, who'd already picked the lock went to go out the window,"

Otto, who'd been silent so far, said, voice disbelieving, "What about the bars? Surely, this jail had bars on the window?"

Artie waved a hand, "Hell, I don't know how they got around 'em but they did, maybe the jail had 'em maybe it didn't, ya know? Anyway they musta figured out it was a trick, 'cause a few of 'em came rushin' back an' pulled him back in. Only his suspenders got caught on the wall, or maybe on the bars of the window if they'd sawed 'em, in a way that held him off the ground a couple inches and tugged his drawers right up." Again Artie gestured in a way that made everybody wince, though not nearly as hard as they had the first time. An' then the little sheriff just left him there, for hours, while he laughed an' cracked jokes at him."

"That ain't worse than being dumped in an outhouse," said Cloyd, sounding disapproving. Houston was 100% sure he was right, but at the same time Cloyd had always been too big for anybody to try that with, so it wasn't like he would know.

Artie, not wanting to start a fight, said, "Sure, pal, but it's my turn ain't it? Ya got yours."

Tommy broke in again, starting to get incensed, "We ain't got no time to be tellin' stories, we need to be gettin' ready to ride."

"Anyway," Artie said, still ignoring Tommy with a wicked little smirk, everybody else doing the same, because hell, at this point why not?, "Lily said the fella tryin' to escape was part of the Yatt's gang..."


End file.
